We are officially starting our Workout for Wishes week tomorrow morning! IF YOU HAVEN’T already signed up, this is your very last chance. Enrollment ends tonight at midnight and that’s it until next year’s event.

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If you have wanted to learn the smartest way to lose fat and keep it off while gaining strength and energy, now you can! For one whole week Body for Life and health transformation expert Bill Phillips and his team will take you through the exact workouts you can do at home or a gym for incredible results. Bill Phillips gives you the meal plans and goal setting and achieving methods that have helped so many people over age 40, 50, even over age 60, get in the best shape of their lives!

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Bill Phillips can be your LIVE personal trainer and health coach, starting tomorrow! Your entire sign up fee is donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation so this is a special opportunity to make a change in your life while you also make a difference in the lives of others. Please, click the link below and sign up now before it is too late. Enrollment closes tonight. Bill Phillips Workout for Wishes week starts in the morning… just hours from now!

Did you know that more than two thousand people in America will die of a heart attack today? And did you know more women than men die of a heart attack?

Do you almost feel trapped in a body that hurts and a body that you can’t seem to get control of?

For more than 30 years I have helped people from all walks of life transform… to change their body, to change their life. I have been out of shape myself and I know it can happen to anyone. But I also KNOW you don’t have to give up or give in to poor health.

You don’t have to settle for a body you don’t like and a life you don’t love!

You CAN Transform your health and fitness and you can rebuild and renew your LIFE. It happens one day at a time. Here are the 6 Key steps I help people learn and implement through my LIVE Video Coaching Program:

1) Exercise most days. Lift weights. Do interval aerobics. A half hour a day with intense effort is better than longer workouts with low effort. My methods are safe, sustainable, effective and efficient. Consistency and intensity are the keys that make workouts work.

2) Plan your meals ahead of time and follow your plan. You can’t go wrong with eating a balance of healthy foods, smaller meals more frequently throughout the day and an occasional off day or free day gives flexibility and practicality which are key for long-term results. Take vitamins and supplement with quality proteins if you can’t get in enough healthy whole-food meals each day.

3) Connect with a support group to give and receive encouragement and accountability. Transformation is a Team sport so to speak. Connect with a community of other people who are also trying to make healthy changes and you more than double your results in the short and long term.

4) Think it through! We get out of shape by not paying attention to what we are doing. We get in shape by taking the opposite approach which is to pay attention to our health! Don’t take your eyes off the road! Take a few minutes each evening to review how you did that day, give yourself feedback, make note of several things you did right that day and identify one thing you can do even better the following day. THINK, plan, prepare as a daily habit.

5) MINDSET is key! Set your mind in the right direction–cultivate a positive, healthy mindset by seeing your progress as success. Heck just making an effort to improve your health is success! Be proud of even trying because most people don’t! Success must be measured by the completion of key daily action steps and not just by the scale. Measure your success by what you have accomplished, not by what you haven’t. Focus on progress, not perfection! Progress = Success.

6) Develop a long-term Vision for your Health (your vision is guided by your values). Set mid and short term, measurable, specific GOALS which are aligned with your Vision and Values… goals can be behavior or performance based (I Will Workout at least 60 times over the next 12 weeks) as well as result based (I Will be 30 lbs. Lighter within 6 months). Use your goals to answer the question, “What can I do between now and this time tomorrow to take a step in the direction of my goals and vision?” Remember that human beings are motivated by the prize more than the penalty… reward yourself in some personally meaningful way for the achievement of goals and you will get inspiration to set new goals and work to achieve them too. Momentum is a powerful force.

You CAN Change — There is Living Proof

I have seen so many people lose fat and gain muscle, transform their health, and change their lives over the long term with the approach I just described. Now, is that the only way? No. There is more than one right way. But when you decide to change your health and improve your life, how many proven effective ways do you need? One! So pick one that works and stick with it for goodness sake!

Accept the fact that you CAN change; YOU have the ability; and with that ability comes the RESPONSIBILITY. It is up to YOU to own that responsibility. No one is going to do this for you. You are the one your new body and life is waiting on! Make the decision to transform and doors will start opening for you!

When you change your health and life for the better you inspire others to do it too. Your change makes a difference. And Lord don’t we need it now in this country more than ever before! You can change the world around you by changing yourself. It’s true. And with the right method, it is pretty simple… I didn’t say EASY, I said simple.

++ Join my LIVE video workout club and I will be your personal trainer and nutrition coach for 28 straight days. I will show you exactly what exercises to do and I will do them with you, LIVE. I will show you the right foods and meals to eat, everyday. No guess work! You will lose fat, gain muscle strength and energy. You will transform your health and develop the key habits you need to be successful in the long term.

In this brand new 25 minute video Bill Phillips trains with Mark Bell, one of the best strength coaches and strongest men in the world. Bill Phillips is traveling around the country this summer learning from experts like Mark Bell and others; always looking to improve, even at age 50 and with over 30 years of experience teaching transformation and Body-for-LIFE. Watch the video to get some new insight about what workouts produce strong results and also get some motivational insight along the way!

I have been teaching people the benefits of weight lifting and of intense interval aerobics for more than 20 years. Six million Body-for-LIFE books were picked up by readers around the world and many of them put my quick, effective workouts to work with good results.

Now even though I am an advocate for interval workouts, I find the attached article absurd and borderline offensive. In the write up, a person who claims to be an expert on fitness, makes the claim that ‘cardio’ causes cancer, heart attacks, and increases in bodyfat.

The FACTS clearly show (facts backed up by thousands of published studies) that virtually ANY exercise is better than no exercise. Brisk walking, jogging, swimming, can all be safe forms of cardio-vascular and cardio-respiratory exercise. I want everyone to enjoy the benefits of physical activity–it is the best medicine there is for living longer and living better.

One meta-analysis published in the Journal of Cardiovascular Rehab looked at 33 studies with 883,372 total test subjects… researches determined that people who do cardiovascular exercise (‘cardio’) live much longer than people who don’t. “All-cause mortality was reduced 33%.”

If the topic is ‘over-training’ or doing extreme amounts of exercise, you can do that with weights, with intervals, or excessive jogging or running. Over-training is NOT the same as ‘cardio.’

Just because I am a lifter and sprinter, I would NEVER claim that it is ‘my way or the highway.’ Minute for minute, my intense workouts probably give you the best return on your investment of time in the gym… but that does not mean there aren’t many other healthy ways to get active! If you’ve read the attached article or heard other so-called experts claim that cardio causes obesity, cancer, illness, don’t believe it!! Common sense and science tell us this writer is dead wrong!

Click Here to Read The Controversial Article Titled, “Does Cardio Make You Fat?”

Bill Phillips has a new, FREE program available online right now that gives you specific instruction for how to get back on track with your health and fitness. Discover how to get better results faster from exercise; learn how to eat for healthy weight loss and renew your energy for life! You can learn all about this program called Back to FIT for FREE when you visit:

Lifting free-weight dumbbells is an incredibly effective and efficient way to work the major muscles of your body. The lower body workout I teach at my Transformation Center is all done with dumbbells. The exercises which make up this routine blast the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, and calves. When we use the proper form it also strengthens the core, improves flexibility and builds stabilizer muscles which support the knees, ankles, and hips. This lower body workout includes three variations of squats — it is absolutely the best exercise for lower body work and it also is incredibly good for calorie burning and cardiovascular health improvements. This workout is the exact approach that I have followed to rebuild my leg muscles after a brutal injury I suffered a few years ago. This workout works and it’s simple (not easy) to do.

I used this Lower Body Workout to rebuild my leg muscles, at age 50, after an injury which ruptured the quadriceps tendons on both legs.

With this ‘5-25 Intense Interval Strength Training’ workout I can stick with the same weight for all 5 sets (as opposed to ‘pyramiding’ or increasing weight for each set as we did with Body-for-LIFE). The way 5-25 is designed we reach ‘progressive resistance overload’ (needed for positive muscle adaptations) through fatiguing the muscles more with each set. By your 5th set of 10 reps for each muscle group your muscles will be thoroughly cooked, and that is good!

Lower Body Workout

1. Dumbbell Squats — 10 Reps 2. Straight-Leg Deadlift — 10 Reps 3. Dumbbell Sumo Squats — 10 Reps 4. Standing Dumbbell Calf Raises — 10 Reps 5. Narrow Stance Dumbbell Front Squat — 10 Reps Complete all 5 exercises, 10 reps of each, with no rest between. After you’ve completed all 5 exercises, rest 2 minutes and then repeat the cycle. Aim for the completion of 5 times through the cycle in approximately 25 minutes. ++This workout can be done with a number of different exercise combinations. For example: 10 reps of barbell squats, followed by 10 reps on the leg extension machine, 10 reps of leg curls, 10 seated calf raises, and 10 reps on the leg press machine. There are many different combinations we can put together to get an excellent high intensity strength training workout for the lower body. ++Never sacrifice good form to lift more weight. Doing the exercises with proper form and lifting the weights slowly and under control is even more important for those of us over 40. The great results from working out consistently come over time. Injuries are setbacks that throw us off track. Good form is one of the keys to keeping your exercise program going and producing great results.

Dumbbell Squats

Starting Position: Hold two dumbbells at your sides, with your palms facing in. Stand with your feet shoulder width apart. The Exercise: While keeping your chin up, bend your legs at the knees and lower your hips until your thighs are parallel with the floor. Then, pushing from your heels, lift yourself back up to the starting position. Breathe out on exertion. Take your time — go lower and slower to fully work the leg muscles.

Straight-Leg Deadlift

Starting Position: Stand up straight, with your feet shoulder width apart and a dumbbell in each hand, your palms facing towards the front of your legs. This is a terrific exercise for the hamstrings, and it helps strengthen the lower back. The Exercise: Bend forward at your hips, and slowly lower the dumbbells in front of you, keeping the weights very close to your legs, until the weights almost tough the floor. Then, while concentrating on the muscles in the back of your legs, raise your upper body and the weights to the starting position. Roll your shoulders back, keep your chin up, take a deep breath and then repeat the exercise.

Dumbbell Sumo Squat

Starting Position: Hold a single dumbbell or ‘kettle bell’ in front of you. Your feet should be pointed out diagonally at about a 45 degree angle. Stand with your feet double shoulder width apart. The Exercise: While keeping your shoulders, back, and head upright, bend your legs at the knees and lower your hips until your thighs are parallel with the floor. Then, pushing from your heels, lift yourself back up to the starting position. Keep your back as straight as possible throughout this exercise.

Standing Dumbbell Calf Raises

Starting Position: Start by holding a dumbbell in each hand, with your palms facing the sides of your hips. Stand with your feet half shoulder width apart. Keep your feet parallel with each other. The Exercise: Keeping your legs straight, raise up on the ball of your feet. When you get to the top hold it for a count of one, then slowly lower to the starting position.

Narrow Stance Dumbbell Front Squat

Starting Position: Hold two dumbbells at your sides, with your palms facing in. Stand with your feet half shoulder width apart. The narrow stance will make the quadriceps muscle groups work even harder than regular squats. The Exercise: While keeping your shoulders, back, and head upright, bend your legs at the knees and lower your hips until your thighs are parallel with the floor. Then, pushing from your heels, lift yourself back up to the starting position. Keep your back as straight as possible throughout this exercise. Breathe out on exertion.

At my fitness center in Golden, Colorado we have numerous exercise machines, and even though we have been open for years, they’re all virtually brand new. That’s because they’re hardly ever used. We have dozens of dumbbells and they’ve each been lifted over 10,000 times. Free weight dumbbells are a very smart choice, especially for those of us over 40 who need to be careful not to put unnecessary stress on tendons and ligaments during the workout. Dumbbells give us the leeway to find the right groove, where the muscles work hard and the connective tissue isn’t damaged in the process of getting stronger. Dumbbells also work more stabilizer muscles than machines, and you can find them at virtually any fitness center – even while traveling. My home gym is a workout bench and dumbbells.

Once you learn the basic free-weight exercises for the major muscles of the upper and lower body, you can use these for life. The whole idea that muscles need a novel stimulus to adapt has been misinterpreted over the years to think that muscles need completely different exercise. It doesn’t need variety as much as they need intensity. The adaptations are caused by overload. If you have a habit of working out in a comfort zone, you can go from one workout to the next; one set of exercises to the next and still not create any novel stimulus. The important thing is to learn how to workout hard and push yourself out of your comfort zone. In Body-for-LIFE I called this the High Point Training Technique — in a nutshell it means pushing yourself during the workout — giving it your very best effort and then reaching down deep inside and giving it even more.

Following my recommended workout will make your muscles get stronger, help you burn fat faster because your metabolism goes up (for as much as 30 to 40 hours after your workout), improve your cardio-pulmonary health, help your heart get stronger, and even give your brain more energy!

The keys to tapping into all these benefits and more is to do weight lifting in intense intervals where we work hard for a couple minutes then rest two minutes, then work, rest, work, rest, and work, rest again. We want to get our heart rate up to 90% to 95% of our estimated cardiac maximum (220 minus our age: for me that means I am aiming for about 160 heart beats per minutes at the end of my work sets–then I rest for a couple minutes until my pulse comes down to about 120).

On my 5-25 Upper Body Workout I do the 5 exercises shown in this blog. I do 10 reps of each set. I do one set right after the other, with no rest. After I complete 10 repetitions of all 5 exercises, I wait a couple minutes (this is just enough time for a training partner to go through their 5 sets if you’re working out with somebody) and then I repeat all 5 exercises for a total of 5 times.

With this ‘5-25 Intense Interval Strength Training’ workout I can stick with the same weight for all 5 sets (as opposed to ‘pyramiding’ or increasing weight for each set as we did with Body-for-LIFE). The way 5-25 is designed we reach ‘progressive resistance overload’ (needed for positive muscle adaptations) through fatiguing the muscles more with each set. By your 5th set of 10 reps for each muscle group your muscles will be thoroughly cooked, and that is good!

+ This upper body workout can be done with alternate exercises for each muscle group. For example: barbell bench press, followed by dumbbell shoulder press, then wide grip lat pull downs, preacher bicep curls, triceps push downs. At my Transformation Center I like to teach people how to do the whole routine with just dumbbells and a bench as many of them workout at home after leaving my Transformation Camp. For those who workout at a commercial gym, they can choose different exercises as shown above. Some people like to change the exercises up every 4 to 6 weeks and that can help them stay mentally stimulated by the workouts and perhaps offer some physiological benefit as well. I stick with the same exercises shown in this blog month after month, and I continue to get excellent results. I keep my workouts very simple — the key for me is hitting a high level of intensity during the lifts.

+ People who have been successful with my 12-week programs over the years are those who take the time to think through and plan their workouts ahead of time. Below is an example exercise worksheet that I give people at my fitness center — it allows them to plan and record information about their workouts. They make notes before and after each workout. When their records show that they can consistently complete 10 reps of a certain weight with good form, I recommend they increase the weight approximately 5 lbs. for their next workout. Make a note of anything you can think of which you can do better for your next workout, and you’ll be constantly improving.

Incline Dumbbell Bench Press

Starting Position: Sit on the edge of an incline bench. Pick up a dumbbell with each hand, place them on your thighs, and then one at a time position them at the base of your shoulders. Lean back, get firmly situated on the bench and you’re ready to go.

The Exercise: Press the weights up to a point over your upper chest and hold them there for a count of one. Then, inhale deeply as you lower the weights to the starting position. Hold the weights in the bottom position for a quick count of one, and then exhale as you drive them back up. Lock your elbows in the top position.

Tip 1: Don’t set your bench at too steep of an incline, or you’ll work your shoulders more than your chest. The incline should be about a 35 to 45 degree angle.

Iron Cross Side Raise

The Exercise: Keeping your arms straight, lift the weights out and up to the sides until they are about level with your chin, and hold them there for a count of one. From this position, lower them slowly back to your sides. It’s important to keep your palms turned downward as you lift the dumbbells so your shoulders, rather than your biceps, do the work.

Tip 1: Don’t lean back and “swing” the weights up. Lift them straight out to your sides until they are almost directly out from your shoulders. In the top position it looks almost like a gymnast doing an iron cross on the rings.

Tip 2: Don’t lean your torso forward and bring the dumbbells down in front of your body. Instead let the weights down at your sides.

Dumbbell Rowing

Starting Position: With a dumbbell in each hand and your feet shoulder width apart, bend forward at the waist so your upper body is parallel with the floor. Let your arms hang straight down, palms facing each other. This is a great exercise for the latissimus dorsi muscles of the back as well as the rhomboid, trapezius, and rear deltoid. All the muscles in the legs have to work on this one as well.

The Exercise: Pull the dumbbells up, concentrating on getting the elbows as high as they can go. After you’ve rowed the dumbbells up as far as you can, slowly lower them to the starting position.

Tip 1: Resist the temptation to lift your torso up as you raise the dumbbells — try to keep your back flat and your torso parallel to the ground.

The Exercise: Take a deep breath, then curl the weights up towards the shoulders in an arc. Exhale as you lift the weights (on exertion). During the curl, keep your upper arms and torso still — there will be some movement but avoid swinging the weights up (a very common mistake). Let your biceps do the work. Then, lower the dumbbells slowly to the starting point.

Tip 1: Don’t lean back or forward as you lower the weights. This reduces the amount of work the biceps are getting.

Dumbbell Triceps Extensions

Starting Point: Stand with your feet shoulder with apart and your knees slightly bent. Grasp one end of a dumbbell with both hands (palms up), and raise it above your head.

The Exercise: Bend your arms and slowly lower the dumbbell behind your head. Keep your elbows relatively close to your head and pointed straight up throughout the exercise to keep the focus on your triceps. Lower the weight until you feel a stretch in your triceps, hold for a count of one, then press the weight back up, following an arc so you don’t bonk the back of your head. Keep lifting until your arms are locked out and the dumbbell is again directly over your head.

Tip 1: Don’t hold the dumbbell like a sandwich. Place your palms so they face the inside end plate of the dumbbell, with your index fingers and thumbs touching.